Broken Together
by sidewinder
Summary: Set during the season 6 episode "Haunted". Fin throws himself back into work after being injured, but is he trying to fix his past or run away from his current life? (Fin/Munch slash, part of my series "The Spaces in Between" of episode-related F/M vignettes.)


_A/N: Title & song lyrics at the end are taken from Casting Crowns' "Broken Together". I take a certain perverse pleasure in finding slashfic inspiration from a contemporary Christian song. _

_Characters property of NBC/Dick Wolf. This story was written purely for fun and not for profit. This episode bugged me for not having nearly enough Fin/Munch feels so I just had to do something to correct for that._

Fin stared blankly at the television screen, not paying attention to forced banter of the late night talk show host and his guest but hoping that the mindless background noise might finally lull him into some semblance of sleep. His bed would be more comfortable than this sofa, but for the past few nights his bed had become a haunting ground, a place where his dreams tormented him with visions of the dead and dying.

Of bodies unmoving and lifeless in dark pools of spreading blood. Of Tricia lying nameless in a forgotten grave until now, while her child was somewhere out there crying for his mother.

Fin's shoulder throbbed with dull pain but he tried to ignore it. They'd forced pain pills on him when he'd been discharged from the hospital but he'd flushed them the minute he'd gotten home. He'd live with the pain from his injury better than the dullness medication brought to his mind. He couldn't afford to be unfocused now, not when he was working with a rookie who'd nearly gotten them blown to pieces earlier today by missing the trip wire outside that junkie meth-cooker's place. Sandoval was okay but he was green, too cocky. If Fin hadn't needed the kid's help to get up to speed on the narc trade, he knew he'd do better off without him.

Better off, truthfully, with his regular partner's help, but he didn't want to bring John into this matter. This was personal; this was cleaning up his own mistakes and messes from his history.

Fin's thoughts continued spiraling in loops between the past and present. He wondered how many other girls like Tricia might be dead and gone whom he hadn't even thought twice about while working them to bust their dealers. Perhaps his old friend Bosco was right and SVU had made him soft. Or perhaps those years in Narcotics had taken too much from him, and he was only realizing now how high the price had been.

A family. A life beyond this miserable job.

A soft knocking at his door startled Fin out of his brooding thoughts, made him instinctively alert and prepared to go for his gun. "Who is it?" he called, wondering who the hell it could be this late at night.

"It's only me, Fin."

John. He recognized the voice immediately and relaxed. They'd exchanged a set of keys to each other's apartment buildings and units some time ago, just as a precaution. Part of looking out for each other as partners...even before they'd become anything more than that.

Fin rose from the sofa to undo the chain on the inside of the door. He opened it to see John there, looking even more grim than usual. "Hey."

"May I come in?"

"You don't have to ask, man."

"Really. I was beginning to wonder."

"What's that supposed to mean?" John brushed past him and Fin closed the door, puzzled by his partner's gruffness.

John rested his lanky form against the arm of the easy chair instead of taking a seat, his arms folded against his chest while Fin went back to the sofa. He shrugged and said, "You tell me, since I haven't been able to catch up with you all week. You've barely stopped running since you got out of the hospital."

"I've got to do what I can to find Tricia's baby."

"To ease your guilty conscience. I get that. But you're still recovering from what could have been a fatal gunshot wound. You should be taking at least some time off for yourself after what happened. Maybe even spare a second for your long-time, long-suffering partner, here, who almost thought he'd lost you. This poor schlub of a guy who kind of cares about you and has been wondering if he did something to push you away."

Fin sighed and shook his head. Christ, he didn't need this drama on top of everything else right now. "It's not you."

John responded with a sharp laugh. "Oh, like I've never heard _that_ one before..."

"I don't mean it like that! You ain't done anything wrong." Fin grimaced, unhappy at being put on the spot to talk, to defend himself. To have to put words to the emotions he felt for his partner that still tended to confuse him and make him extremely uncomfortable. "Cragen told me you asked to stay at the hospital while I was in surgery, instead of heading to the crime scene. That meant a lot."

"Yeah well, I wasn't going to be good for anything until I knew you wouldn't be leaving there in a body bag. But that was days ago and...Fin, you've been keeping me out. I call, you don't answer. You're at the station, it's just to get help from the captain or dig through old files. I ask how you're doing, you treat me like an imposition."

"I've. Been. Busy," Fin said slowly, his annoyance building.

"Yeah, with your new little buddy from Narcotics. Sandoval, right? He's kind of a cutie. Feeling the need to trade in for a younger model as reward for your near death experience?"

"The fuck is wrong with you, John?!"

"Nothing. Everything. I wish I knew." John shook his head and pushed himself off the chair. "I shouldn't have bothered. I'm out of here."

"Wait, hold on." John was already headed for the door but Fin stopped him, grabbing him firmly around the waist, mindless of the way the pain flared in his shoulder. John didn't turn around, in fact he resisted the embrace until Fin pressed his head against the back of John's neck and squeezed him. "I'm sorry. Don't go."

John tentatively relaxed after a moment, letting out a shuddering breath and leaning slightly into Fin. His voice was tight as he said, "I thought I lost you, dammit. When Liv called me on my way in to the station..."

"You didn't lose me. I'm right here."

"Then let me in on what's going on with you. So I can try to help." John eased around in Fin's arms and gave him a smirking look that only partly masked the hurt in his eyes. "Believe it or not, I'm not just in this relationship for your cunning wit—nor your talent for fucking me senseless. I actually care about you, you dumb lug."

Fin smiled and teased, "You tryin' to tell me that you love me, Munchy?"

" _'Munchy'_? Call me that again and I'm definitely out of here."

"Not before I get some of what I've been missing for days." Fin reached up with his good arm to grasp the back of John's neck, pulling his head closer for a long kiss. The familiar taste of his mouth was a balm to Fin's soul, a comfort he knew he'd been foolish to reject since the shooting. After a time, as he could feel them both letting go of the tension, he pulled back to say, "I'm sorry. Shooting those kids...it got to me. Even if they would've killed me if I hadn't, I don't like what I had to do."

"I know."

"Then seeing my own son at the hospital, and seeing how little he wants to have to do with me...that got to me real bad."

"I can imagine."

"And then to have Sandra come out of nowhere, making me feel like her daughter's death was all my fault...shit, man, I didn't need any more reason to feel like I don't deserve to still be here right now. That I don't deserve any reason to be happy, to feel good to be alive...like the way I feel with you."

"So you shut me out."

"I shut everyone out, except for Sandra and Tricia, and now her little boy, Austin. I gotta find him."

"And you will. But you don't need to in order to justify your being alive."

John initiated the kiss this time, one full of desperation and need, so intense it almost made Fin dizzy as his blood rushed to his groin. He'd never been with a man before, not until John had come into his life. Never had even considered it and he still wasn't sure how precisely it had happened, what had switched on in his brain to suddenly make him crave and hunger for the things this man could do to him. It made no sense and yet, here in his arms, it made all the sense in this fucked up world that anything ever could.

"How 'bout we take this to the bedroom," Fin suggested, interrupting the kiss because he literally wasn't sure that he wouldn't pass out if they kept this up while standing. John didn't need to be told twice. The television was silenced and he followed Fin into the other room, already working on the buttons of his shirt as he went. While Fin sat on the edge of the bed and shrugged his clothes off casually into a pile on the floor, John undressed with fast precision, carefully folding his jacket, tie, shirt and pants on the dresser.

"Look at you, mister neat-and-proper."

"Hey, if I'm going to be doing the walk of shame out of here and into the squadroom tomorrow morning, I have to maintain a degree of proper appearances."

Once fully undressed he moved quickly to the bed and into Fin's waiting arms. The shock of bare skin against his own made Fin moan against John's mouth, as John gently pushed him down, covered Fin's body with his lean form.

John pulled back after a time to study Fin's left shoulder, where the bandages still covered his stitches, bruises surrounding the bullet wound. He circled his long fingers around it gingerly but Fin assured him, "It's okay."

"I know. But just let me take care of you tonight." John placed feather-light kisses against Fin's chest and shoulder, around but not too close to the wound, while Fin closed his eyes and gave himself over to John's attentions. At first, their sexual encounters had been generally swift and to the point, zero-to-blow job or fucking hard up against a wall before either could stop to question what they were doing. Yet gradually slower, gentler affections had begun to feel good between them, started to be all right. Like how John's kisses down the length of Fin's torso tonight left his stomach fluttering like he was some kind of virgin schoolgirl. And how he wanted to feel John's short hair between his fingers as John took him in with his mouth, caressing his scalp instead of roughly holding him in place to direct his movements.

Was this love? Did Fin even know what that meant? He knew in his nightmares since the shooting, sometimes he heard the bullets fire and saw his son lying there on the floor of the bodega instead of one of the perps. Sometimes he saw John, bloody and pale, bleeding out and he couldn't even move, couldn't even try to reach him to help. Ken and John, the only two people Fin realized he cared so deeply about, and one could barely stand to be in the same room with him for more than a few seconds unless he was dying.

So why would John want to stay?

Yet he did. He stayed, and he came to Fin even when Fin tried to keep him away. And right now he had Fin deep in his throat, and the feeling was incredible and Fin never wanted him to stop.

Climax came far too soon, its rapid onset speaking of just how much Fin had been needing relief. John didn't release him until the last shudders of pleasure had passed, a sense of peace and serenity falling over him like a blanket.

Or perhaps it was simply the warmth of John's body against his side, draped against him and radiating heat that was near electric.

"You want...?" Fin started, reaching for the other man's body.

"Don't worry about me tonight. I'm good."

"You're hard as a rock."

"I'll jerk off against you while you're sleeping. Which I can tell you will be in thirty seconds, tops."

Fin snorted and muttered, "Perv."

"Comes with the territory."

Truthfully Fin was too exhausted and content to put up any protest. Maybe with John here, tonight, he could enjoy a night's sleep free of the demons that had been haunting him all week. Maybe they could wake up tomorrow and, working together as a team with Sandoval and the rest of the unit, they could find Austin and get him safely to his grandmother's protection.

Maybe tomorrow, it wouldn't hurt so much to be among the living.

 _Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete_  
 _Could we just be broken together_ _?_


End file.
